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Essential Elements
by Irene Smith
There are certain elements that have become standard for every web site. That doesn't mean that they are absolutely required, just that most sites have these elements. Of course, how you present them is where the creativity comes in. Let's take a look at some of the elements that every web site should have and then we'll also look at those elements that every page in your site should have. None of these ideas I'm presenting are hard and fast rules, just suggestions. Once you are familiar with the basics, you can do what you want.
Web Site Essentials
There are certain sections that every web site should include. Call them what you want, but every site should include the following elements:
- Home Page - The introductory page that people see when they first arrive at your web site. It should tell them a little bit about the site and let them know what's available for their viewing pleasure. There are probably as many ways to greet visitors as there are web sites. Well... maybe not that many but there are a lot of ways to do it. For example, you might present a title graphic with or without a description of your site and an invitation to "Come on in!" Or you might present a site index with full descriptions of each section in your site. You might use a combination of these two elements. By the way, if thoughts of flashing background colors and automatic re-direction are swimming in your head, please don't do it! It was cute and interesting the first time someone did that, but now? Old hat. Find something else new and exciting for your front page.
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- Site Index - If you don't use your home page as a site index, you should probably include a page that just lists and describes the various sections of your site. Make it easy for visitors to see what you have to offer. If you make them randomly wander from page to page, most of your visitors will give up and head for parts unknown, never to return! Whether you call it a menu, a site map, an index or whatever, make sure people can find what you're offering. Oh, and if you want to include a JavaScript menu or one of those drop-down lists, that's great! Just make sure you offer a plain text version of the information as well. It's hard for those of us who surf with graphics and JavaScript turned on to remember that there are people who turn these features off in order to cover ground more rapidly.
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- What's New - Call it a Site Journal, call it News, Ramblings, Musings, or just Stuff I Want You to Know, make sure you have some location where you tell people what's new and what's changed. Part of the reason for creating a site in the first place is to get people to visit you more than once... isn't it? Make sure those repeat visitors can tell where they should place their attention.
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- Resources - If your web site is about yourself, you might not need a "resources" or "links" page. On the other hand, most people who have a web site have found some other site they want to share with their visitors. Even if all you want to share is the addresses of your friends' pages, a links page is nice. Of course, it's possible to go too far! Unless the main reason for creating your site is to act as a resource to other sites that cover a certain topic, don't overdo it. There are search engines for that sort of thing. Also, make sure you tell people more about the sites in your list than their URLs! Take a look at my links page as an example. I won't include a site here without at least a description of what the site has to offer and, if I have a strong opinion about the site (good or bad) you can be sure I'm going to tell you that too.
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- Guestbook - Some people love to sign guestbooks, others never do. On the other hand, the guestbook is sometimes the easiest way to gather feedback from your visitors. There are many people who will leave a message in a guestbook much more quickly than they will send you an e-mail message or fill out a feedback form.
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- Feedback Form - Despite what I said about feedback forms under the Guestbook section right above, feedback forms can be an invaluable tool in gather information from your guests. This is particularly true if you are selling goods or services. A form the visitors can fill out to ask for more information can sometimes make the difference between making a sale and having the potential sale "sail" away on the tide.
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- Message Board - Yet another way to gain feedback. This element is not "essential" but is a good feature to add if your site deals with a topic of interest to many people. It lets visitors "talk
amongst themselves" and discuss the information your site has to offer. In addition, if you pay attention to the kinds of questions and answers your messages contain, you might get some ideas for future content or even whole sections to add to your site.
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- About - This could be About Me, "About Us", or whatever. Many people, including me, like to know a little bit about the person who designed and/or owns the site they are visiting. If your site belongs to a company (yours or the one you work for) this page should include general information about the company. Another important thing to put here is how to contact someone. Of course, if this is your personal site, that someone should be you. Just make sure the e-mail address is correct!
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Web Page Essentials
Now that you know the basic sections that most web sites have, we can talk about individual pages. Certain elements should be included on every page in your web site. Let's list the true essentials first:
- Title - Every page on your web site should have a title. To include the title, use the <TITLE> tag inside the <HEAD> section, like this:
<Title>Smith Family Cyber-Home - Tutorials</TITLE>
It's usually a good idea to include an abbreviated version of your site's name in the title because this is the text that people will see in their Bookmarks or Favorites list. It's sure a lot easier to get back to The Tangled Web when a bookmark says The Tangled Web than when there's a blank line in the list, isn't it?
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- Navigation List - Even if your site uses graphic buttons for navigation, you should also include a list of text links somewhere on each page as well. For one thing, as I said earlier, there are people who surf the 'net with graphics turned off. For another, it makes a nice compact way to list the major sections at the top or bottom of the page. You'll notice that every single page at The Tangled Web has a list of text links at the bottom.
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- Top of Page - If any of the pages in your site are long, it's a nice feature to add an anchor to the top of the page and then sprinkle links to this anchor through the page. This means that at the end of a very long page full of text, the user can click once and return to the top of the page almost instantly, instead of having to scroll upwards slowly. An anchor looks like this:
<A NAME="PageTop"></A>
You can put anything you like or nothing at all between the opening and closing tag pair. It doesn't matter. To create a link to the anchor, simply use the following link tag:
Back to the <A HREF="#PageTop">Top of the Page<A>
If you combine this tip with the next one, you can easily create a simple table of contents for long pages (or tutorials like this one that contain multiple topics!)
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- Section Anchors - If your page is long enough to require links back to the top of the page, you should probably create anchors for each of the pages sub-headings. All anchors are made the same way as the top of page anchor in the previous tip, and all links to anchors are also made the same way. An added advantage of creating link destinations within a page with anchors is that you can link to the anchors from other pages in your site as well. For example, if I had an anchor called
"LinkwareGraphics" on my links page, I could link to it from any other page, like this:
Take a look at these <A HREF="links.html#LinkwareGrahics">links to other graphics sites.≶A>
And, just to show you that it really works (you can return by clicking your browsers "Back" button) try this one: Web Site Resources
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- E-Mail Link - Once again with feeling! Every single page on your web site needs to have a valid e-mail link! Not one, not two, every page. I can't stress this enough. You need to give your visitors a way to contact you. You don't absolutely have to have a guestbook or a feedback form, but you MUST have a way for visitors to reach you. In fact, some of the places that give free web space make this one of the requirements you need to fulfill in order to keep your free space! Frankly, I can't see any reason for an honest webmaster to keep his e-mail a secret. If the thought of too much spam scares you off, create an e-mail account somewhere that you use only for your web site. Most of the free e-mail services allow you to impose spam controls, so you can quickly skim the good stuff and throw the junk away. It may take time to set that up, but it's worth it. Even if the only messages you get tell you about typos, at least you know someone is reading your pages.
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- Copyright Notice - Think this isn't important? Want to donate your work to the public domain? Fine. Even so, a notice that you have donated your work to the public domain is in order. Copyright notices may not stop thieves, but they do make it easier for honest people to give credit where it is due, that is, to YOU! In addition, it's much easier to prosecute copyright infringement when your work is marked with a copyright notice.
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- Graphics Credits - Who made your graphics? You? That's great, then you can add this information to your copyright notice. If not, make sure you give credit where credit is due and place a link to the artist's home page (if they have one) on the page where you use the
graphics. If you got your graphics from a clip art collection, say so. Once again, you're not going to stop
thieves, but you'll make life much easier for honest people.
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There's probably more I could add to this list. In fact, I will add anything I should think of as time goes on. If I make any significant changes to this tutorial, I'll mention it on my "What's New" page.
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